Page 143 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“I’ll go to my room but I won’t go to sleep,” Charlotte said as she marched off upstairs.
“Brush your teeth first,” I called after her.
She was determined to keep herself awake until Alistair came home. When I went up to check on her an hour later, I found the stubborn girl had fallen asleep propped up against her pillows, sitting upright in her bed.
When Alistair had arrived, he’d woken the girls anyway, against my protests. The three of them rushed outside to catch fireflies, Alistair calling over his shoulder for me to bring mason jars from the pantry. When I came out, I saw them, barefoot in the front yard, hands outstretched toward the sky.
How could I reconcile that Alistair—the one who wandered around barefoot in the yard with our daughters catching fireflies, with the man who had done those terrible things to me this evening? I could still feel his hands on me as he pressed me up against the shower wall, one hand on my neck as he thrust his body against mine, the water in my mouth, so I could barely breathe.
I gagged and choked.
It took me a moment to realize what was happening, that there was actually something, someone, holding me down, their hands on my shoulders, twisting around my neck, pushing me below the water. I coughed, trying to get my bearings, my heart hammering in my chest. I felt a hot wave of adrenaline course through me as I clawed at their fingers, trying to loosen their grip, but they only applied more pressure, pushing me farther down.
It was shallow enough that I could stand. My toe stubbed the rocky bottom of the lake and I stood, pressing myself upward, out of the water. The top of my head met the underside of their jaw, and I heard the hard clacking of teeth. Their grasp on me slipped slightly, and I thrust out and hit at them blindly, as I gulped in air and tried to blink the water out of my eyes. I felt my fist knock into flesh, breaking their grip on me. They groaned.
My eyes cleared then and in the dim moonlight I saw the familiar curves of her face, the blond tint of her hair. Margot.
She lurched toward me, grabbing on to my shoulders, trying to force me back beneath the water, and I grabbed on to her, one hand clawing at her shoulder, the other pulling at her hair. I brought my knee up, hard, into her stomach, and I heard the breath go out of her as she released me. I turned and ran toward the shore, back toward the house, but the water muted my strides, pulling at me, slowing me down.
My chest was heaving and my legs shook as I ran, all my energy sapped from my sprints and that initial surge of adrenaline. I could hear her close behind me in the water, closing the gap between us. I wasn’t fast enough. She thrust herself forward, onto my back, and I screamed—a shrill, bloodcurdling call into the night.
Margot grabbed and tore at me, one hand in my face. I bit down on her fingers, drawing blood, and she slipped off of me. I swung around to face her, and our arms locked around each other. We grappled with one another, each trying to push the other down.
I gasped for breath. My legs felt leaden. Margot grunted and shoved me backward and I fell. I felt the weight of her body slam on top of me and I took an involuntary breath, lake water flooding into my mouth. Margot’s hands encircled my neck and she squeezed, tighter and tighter, her thumbs cutting off my trachea. My jugulars beat against her palms like rabid drums. She pushed my face underneath the water and it was in my eyes, my mouth. I struggled against her with all that was in me, with my shaking, weakened arms, but I couldn’t get up.
I thought about my girls, all alone in the house, asleep upstairs. What would happen to them? I tried to think of some way to protect them, the way my whole life I had tried to protect them, to shelter them from the sadness and the evil in the world, from all the injustice and the cruelty. Now I saw how futile that was, how misguided. I shouldn’t have kept the darkness from them; I should have taught them how to survive it, how to shine through it. I should have taken them outside on a moonless night and pointed up at the stars, at those pocks of light in the darkness, how they lit up even then.
I took another involuntary breath and felt the water claw its way down my throat, into my lungs. She held me there, until my body went still and limp, the beat of my pulse flickering out.
Forty-One
Charlie Calloway
2017
It was the busiest I’d seen the dining hall on a Sunday morning all semester. Most of the alumni whose children attended Knollwood were crowding the pancake bar or sitting along the long oak tables with their kids, eating breakfast. I grabbed a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice and sat down at an empty table. I checked my watch. My father had said he’d meet me for breakfast at eight thirty this morning before heading back to the city. It was nearing eight forty-five.
“Are you feeling better?”
I looked up to see my father standing there, two mugs of coffee in hand.
I’d left the gala early, telling only my father that I was leaving, and I’d made an excuse about a disabling migraine.
“I came by to check on you afterward,” he said as he sat down across from me. He slid one of the coffee mugs across the table toward me. “I knocked on your door but you didn’t answer. Your light was off.”
“Sorry, I was out cold,” I lied.
In truth, I didn’t answer because I hadn’t been there. I’d gone back to my room only briefly to change, make some last-minute alterations to my article for the Knollwood Chronicle, and load that and my pictures onto the flash drive I’d purchased the other day at the school gift shop. Then I’d snuck across campus to intercept Finn and switch out his flash drive with mine. I didn’t get back to my dorm room until nearly one in the morning.
Afterward, I hadn’t been able to sleep. It kept running through my mind, the magnitude of what I’d done. I couldn’t take back what I’d written or those pictures. They would be out there in print, for the whole school—the whole world—to see. Forever. I’d tossed and turned and only just drifted off to sleep when my alarm went off, and then I’d had to drag myself out of bed to go meet my father for breakfast before he headed back to the city.
“How long has this been going on?” my father asked, forcing me out of my reverie.
“What?”
“Your migraines,” he said. He had that worried crease between his brows.
“Oh,” I said. “Not long. It’s nothing, really.”
